


won't you bring me the day

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, a romantic murder diptych, some dream bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 15:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11129814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: Alyosha is not a man of violence. / What are bone and sinew to a wizard, after all? What are fear and regret?





	won't you bring me the day

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for episode 24 of WiH!
> 
> I'm very worried about the possibility of Arrell showing up and also the possibility of him NOT showing up in WiH 27, so here have one of the more self indulgent things I've ever written

Alyosha is not a man of violence. He lives in words, not actions, in spills of ink and reams of parchment. Sometimes when he looks at himself in a mirror, he sees only faded sentences, growing fuzzy and indistinct at the edges. The beginnings of a memory.

He knows well the damage that words can do. Words are what Arrell used, long ago now, to so carefully cleave his heart in two. 

They wounded each other, the last time they spoke. Alyosha with his sharp rhetoric and Arrell with his cutting dismissal. Alyosha can see now, in Arrell's eyes, how he has allowed that wound to fester.

Perhaps Alyosha has done no better. He tightens his grip on his knife, running a thumb across the sun carved into its hilt.

They are on the hilltop where weeks ago they passed without a word. The moons lay low in the sky. They bring light, even in this dark hour--something he would say to tease Arrell, in another life, and also something that he believes. The sun may be gone, but there is something else beneath it. 

"There is no true darkness," Alyosha says, "but the one which we make for ourselves." Did he write that in a letter once? No. But he thought about it. It is the sort of thing Alyosha would write down but never say. 

Arrell replies as if picking up the thread of an earlier conversation. And perhaps that is all he and Alyosha's relationship has ever been: a long conversation, winding its way from murmurs to arguments and back again, an endless spool of thread. "There will be nothing but darkness unless we act. Unless _I_ act." The curve of Arrell's neck and the set of his jaw are all contempt. "All your small acts of care and concern will mean nothing, in the end, for those who remain here."

"I wonder." Alyosha steps closer, closer still, until Arrell must raise his chin to meet his eyes. "Does a thing only mean something if it lasts? How might we account for your books, then? Even the most well made will fade with time. Or a song, which disperses into the air once it is sung? Or the sketch of us that you kept for all these years, flimsy as any paper if fire comes, and yet--"

The sound Arrell makes is nearly a snarl. He grabs Alyosha's cloak and drags him closer. His eyes are lit up beautifully, and Alyosha is caught, like a fly in a web, by the memories of all the other arguments that ended just this way. Arrell bright-eyed and vicious, and kissing Alyosha madly for it. 

What they had was impermanent. Alyosha treasured it all the more for that. He still does.

He can see now, silver-white in the moonlight and fragile as spidersilk, the image of Arrell as he was when Alyosha first met him. Younger, but much the same in so many ways: the same furrowed brow and proud jaw, the same harsh turn to his mouth that even then, Alyosha wanted to soften with a smile or a sigh.

"You're making a mistake, Tutor," Alyosha says. He puts a hand to Arrell's cheek, the other still curved around the knife. 

Arrell sneers. "Stop me, then." Alyosha recognizes it for what it is: a plea. Alyosha bends down to kiss him. A slow kiss, the kind they used to indulge in between lessons, a very long time ago. 

Arrell's gasp is ragged as Alyosha slides the knife between his ribs. Alyosha has never killed someone before. He's surprised by how much harder it is to part muscle than skin, by how much force he has to exert. His hand is shaky on the blade. Arrell doesn't stop him, doesn't even try to grab for his staff. He drops forward, his forehead resting in the crook of Alyosha's neck, and his hands clutch weakly at Alyosha's back as he cradles him. 

Alyosha draws out the knife with an awful slick sound, and he falls to his knees, taking Arrell down with him. 

There is a sudden noise. Alyosha jerks his head up, his hand cupped around the back of Arrell's head. The hilltop around them is gone. He spends a few long moments suspended between waking and dreaming. He is unsure whether the fabric under his hand is his bedsheet or Arrell's robe, clenched in his fist. Whether he is alone or if there is another body against his, limp and heavy. Whether the air he breathes tastes of copper or of the everyday dust of an inn.

And then the world resolves itself into what it is: a world where Alyosha has never been able to stop Arrell from doing anything. A world where Arrell would never let himself be stopped. The world as it is. 

Alyosha wonders, as Arrell would, what it could be.

-

Arrell's rooms in Rosemerrow are a mess. Hadrian and Ephrim did a fine job of tossing them. It has been weeks since Arrell has returned here, and he is not quite sure what compelled him to do so now. 

Sitting against Arrell's desk, Alyosha's eyes have the glow of faith in them, as they always do. His thin lips are drawn tight with unhappiness. He has never looked more mortal, like more of who he is. Just a pale and powerless man facing untold destruction.

"You should leave," Arrell tells him. Ah, that's why he came here--the papers on his desk. Research. 

"Probably," Alyosha agrees. "But I like it here. Just as messy as our old set of rooms. What ever happened to those apartments, I wonder? Do other students live there?"

"I don't care." 

"No," Alyosha says, with a smile. "You wouldn't." He holds out a hand to Arrell. "I thought we might talk, for a while. I'm worried about you."

"Are you?" Arrell says. He ignores the hand. "Or do you only _miss me_? I seem to recall that once, I was admonished for my dishonesty."

"Not dishonesty, Tutor." Alyosha drops his arm, but the longing does not leave his voice. "Never that. Only misguided in your framing. I have never thought any worse of you than that."

"Get out of my way," Arrell says. How many times have they rehashed this old argument? How many plans has Alyosha forestalled, objections always coming quick to his lips? How much time has Arrell wasted?

Alyosha does not move. He smiles, bringing wrinkles to the corners of his eyes. "No," he says, a single discordant note ringing out in the familiar harmony of their argument. 

Arrell stares at him. 

"I wonder why I never said that to you," Alyosha says, musingly. "I've never been afraid of you. I suppose I have been indulgent. Perhaps I secretly thought that you might be right." He looks up at Arrell, his eyes glittering. "At least, that's what you always wanted me to be thinking, isn't it?"

"I have never wanted anything from you," Arrell spits, drawing closer.

"Now you're being dishonest." Arrell brings his hand to Alyosha's chest, and Alyosha presses his own above it. The curl of his fingers burns.

"What did you want from me, Tutor?" Alyosha has taken on a sly and teasing tone that Arrell has not heard from him in over a decade. "I wonder. My words, or my hope, or--"

In the way of dreams, Arrell can only watch himself. The press of his hand to Alyosha's chest becomes vicious in an instant. He claws his way beneath the skin. Alyosha's blood, too, is mortal, spilling over Arrell's hand. 

What are bone and sinew to a wizard, after all? What are fear and regret? Arrell has no more time for these things than he ever has.

He closes his hand around Alyosha's heart--the one thing he has never been able to let go of--and he pulls.

Alyosha's gaze is measured as he watches Arrell, as his own blood slides down Arrell's wrist. He does not look surprised. His heart is heavy against Arrell's palm. Alyosha must have the heaviest heart of any man in Hieron. 

His voice is quiet when he whispers "Tutor," against Arrell's ear, his mouth. Arrell breathes in, and squeezes his hand tightly. 

Arrell is woken up by a messenger banging on his door. An urgent letter. Arrell receives it after he finishes wiping his eyes.

He needn't have bothered.

Arrell can still feel Alyosha's beating heart in his hand as he reads the news of his death. He suspects that he always will.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr or twitter at luckydicekirby, where i have never once stopped being sad about alyosha and arrell


End file.
